BBC Radio 4 "You and Yours" just covered cashback deals.
The deals rely on a proportion of customers failing to
meet the rules and thus failing to get their cashback.
If too many people get their cashback, the retailer goes
bust (and then remaining customers get no cashback).

The mobile industry association wants these cashback deals
to cease, as they can only do harm to the image of the
industry. A number of retailers are resisting this though.
Orange or O2 (I forget which) say they've dropped a large
number of retailers in the last year due to complaints
about failing to pay cashbacks.

Advice was to avoid buying on the basis of cashback.
Only take a deal which you would still be happy with
if the cashback never pays out.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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